It’s possible to learn from our mistakes and also give this generation a helping hand
Gavin Williamson wrote in The Daily Telegraph this week that “any debate about the system we’ve used this year should not undermine or question the value of the grades students will be getting”. By writing as he did, Williamson made himself part of the problem rather than the solution.
The Secretary of State for Education might wish that the value of this year’s A-level and GCSE grades will not be questioned but we’ve now had two years of massive grade inflation, and no amount of blustering will stop employers and universities drawing their own conclusions from that.
It is, of course, cripplingly unfair on the young people who have earned their results, who have done nothing wrong and who stand in real danger of having their achievements devalued and undermined. What is needed is a proper debate based on the facts, not whimsical yearnings that everything is fine. In a real debate, such as we have yet to have, there would be two issues: how to protect the students from the worst consequences of the past two years and how to preserve the credibility of grades.
As regards the first issue, we cannot change history. We have students who have missed huge amounts of schooling, had very limited experience of sitting formal exams and, with the best will in the world, are moving on to the next stage in their lives with gaps in their knowledge in comparison with previous cohorts. In addition, these students have been robbed of much of the socialising that is the lifeblood of teenage existence.
We cannot pretend that all these students will bounce successfully into their university courses or apprenticeships as previous young people have done. They will face greater challenges, and as a result need more assistance.
The credibility of their A-level results might be questioned. So our aim must be to give the Covid generation more help to achieve degrees or other results. Healing the wounds of Covid can only be done if real thought and resources are put in – extra teaching, provision of more counselling and regular, increased monitoring of students’ performance and well-being.
As for the gaps in knowledge, universities first of all must test their students to find out what they need to know, and lay on extra tuition to fill those gaps. The potential damage of inflated grades vanishes if the student gets a good degree obtained by traditional methods.
We cannot change what has happened in the past but we can change what happens in the future, and there is no more worthy cause for Government money than helping to cure educational long-covid.
Furthermore, someone needs to do some strong talking to the universities that are planning to continue with online teaching, if only because the socialising that goes on before and after lectures is a vital restorative factor for a generation more accustomed to talking to a screen.
As for the credibility of grades, the big question has not even been asked, never mind answered: what government or political party will be courageous enough to puncture the grade-inflation balloon and let a year’s cohort actually do less well than the previous year?
What is clearly true is that, with all their faults, traditional examinations remain the most effective and objective method of measuring achievement. We need to return to them as a matter of massive urgency.
Teacher-assessed grades need not be discarded in a return to traditional exams. Formal examination should be a safeguard, a test of the accuracy of teacher-assessed grades, and can give those grades increased credibility.
Significant advances have been made as a result of the pandemic in online examining (as they have in online learning), and what a sensible government would do is go all-out for a redesigned exam system that profits and learns from the good practice Covid-19 has created, and which is future-proofed against pandemics.
We cannot pretend that all these students will bounce successfully into their university courses as previous young people have done